Payday Loans: Advertisements

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, this Government have taken very strong action in respect of payday loans by giving the FCA very considerable powers in this area, which it has started to exercise. It is a sign of the times that yesterday DFC, one of the country’s three biggest payday loan providers, issued a profit warning and surrendered to a takeover, citing the tougher new regulatory regime. The weather is changing for payday loans.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I appreciate that this is slightly to one side of the Question, but can my noble friend tell me whether any work is being done to find out how many advertisements for easy ways of gambling away your money are seen by children?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I do not have any specific response to that, except to say that the ASA is able to investigate any complaints about the effect of ads on particularly vulnerable groups, which potentially would include gamblers. Certainly, if you watch paid-for sport television, you get a very large number of ads for online betting, which I find distasteful—but, as with many things in life, there is an interesting argument to be had about the line between what is distasteful and what should be banned.